Category Archives: Crazy Euopean People

Our Story: “How We Met”

Most of the blog posts around this time of the year are about Christmas so I decided it would be nice to write about something else (honestly, I had a Christmas article already prepared…). This blog post is something I promised you already for almost a year but I had pushed it aside as I never felt like writing about it. So here we go now, the story of how my wife and I met and how we fell in love.

 

It all started in January 2009. Back then I just started my university life in Helsinki and new things could be found behind every corner. It was then near the end of January when my Finnish course started, to be precise, I believe it was the 20th of January. I had to sign up for this course as I registered at the University as a foreigner, not a Finnish citizen, though I have both nationalities and the course was compulsory for foreigners. In this language course were of course people from all kind of countries, especially China. Little did I know back then that my future wife would be sitting just in front of me.

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My wife and her godfather with a Panda. This is how I remember her from back then minus the Panda

 

In the beginning we did not speak to each other, we noticed each other but that was pretty much it. It took even the whole next Finnish language course that we talked to each other for the very first time in May 2009. It was not even any small talk, she wanted to ask me about what places to visit in Germany as she planned a short trip there with her friends there. You see, there was zero going on between us. It was the very last day of class when she asked me about Germany and a three-month holiday was ahead of me. Before this question I already noticed her a bit more than back then in January but I just did not dare to talk to her, later I found out that she felt the same way. So during my long summer holiday I often had this Chinese girl on my mind whose real name I didn’t know then, just the  English name she gave at the class introduction. During that time I did not know whether we would meet in the next Finnish course again as she had apparently started a year before me and thus was done with the compulsory amount of language classes.

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My wife and her friends with Santa

Three months later there she was again in the next language class and sitting few rows away. However again we did not talk at all during the entire time except saying “Hello” when waiting in the hallway before class started. It would not change at all until the fourth! Finnish language course in the winter of 2009 that we would slowly start to have little chats before class and she was sitting now in the same row with me. We talked for example about with whom we would do the class assignment with (we did not do the assignment together as some certain people got in our way!), and about that she wasn’t sure whether to take the final class exam or not as she had too many exams plus her job. Occasionally she also gave me some chocolate before class but as the bum I was during that time I had never anything to share with her.

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At the Zoo, note my long hair during that time!

 

Then there it was, the last day of the language course in December of 2009. I still did not know her proper name and I was thinking of how to ask her about it when she suddenly asked me and another girl next to her about our full names for Facebook! I gladly wrote down my name and after school and sports were done on that day I was sitting in front of my laptop for hours waiting for THE friend request. The request came and from that point on we started to write to each other more and more each day on Facebook until she gave me her MSN Messenger address so we could chat better and on a whole new level.

Meanwhile I was in Germany for my Christmas holiday but still I chatted with her on a daily basis for over 12 hours each. It was somewhat like a Christmas love story but of course that is probably how many feel chatting with a person who they are interested in during Christmas time…We covered all kinds of stupid chat topics and in the end of the holidays, just before classes would start again we had decided to watch “Avatar” together in Cinema. It wasn’t really a date at all even though we both had hoped for it but we just were too shy to make any real moves. Then in the beginning of February 2010 she set me a deadline because I said for a long time that I had something important to tell her but didn’t dare to. Of course anyone without even a brain knows what it was but still we were both not ready for it. So on that deadline, February the 3rd 2010, I confessed my love to her and we started our story together.

 

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First Christmas together

The rest of the story is full of some little drama and happy things until we reach this day: We are married and have a little son together. It all started to develop five years ago, just before Christmas, around this time of the year and this is why I chose this day to share my story of how I met my wife. As you can see, good things might take their time as it took us even nearly an entire year to talk to each other though we saw each other several times a week in the language course! So don’t always expect things to work out immediately, take your time. It is not all depending on how much you try, luck is also very important in these things.

 

I wish you all a merry Christmas and enjoy these days as I am definitely planning to do as well as soon as all Christmas presents are bought.

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts.

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The Tang Paradies in Xi’an

During our first visit to China we went together with MIL and my parents to the Tang Paradies in Xi’an. The Tang Paradies is a huge cultural theme park all about the Tang Dynasty located in the Qujiang Resort in Xi’an with the Big Wild Goose Pagoda very nearby.

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Mother-in-law invited us for a full day program in this cultural theme park so we left in early morning to avoid too long queues at the ticket stands. However the entrance area was already filled with people and while MIL tried to get us into a group for the group ticket discount my parents and I became famous with a deaf school children group. Thanks to them the time flew by pretty quickly taking all kind of group pictures and writing down our names and where we are from.

First things first. If you plan to visit this park really make sure to have the whole day time as just walking the main path around will take already several hours. I would even go as far as saying you won’t even manage to visit each little interesting corner of the park in one day!

After going through the entrance gate it really felt like entering another place entirely as the city and the noise vanished and the Tang Paradies was all around us. You might imagine it is boring to walk around a park which is about such a topic but really it was really nice to go around and see the different sections of the park. The only thing which was bothering us was the heat but there is nothing else to expect when traveling in China during July!

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MIL and her best new friend

 

The Park has many scenic areas with different cultural themes. What made it very enjoyable at least for me was the smell! No bad city smell around as the path has every few meters incense burners to fill the air with a nice fragrance. All around the park you can encounter interesting things such as poetry, song and dance or also the most important thing: Food! Why am I emphasizing this? Well, as mentioned before on that day it was incredibly hot and during midday MIL and my wife got hungry so they got themselves some hot and oily noodle soup. Meanwhile my parents and I were just suffocating by the heat and could only eat some ice cream. Even looking at my wife and MIL eating this warm dish made us sweat even more.

All around the park are places with water. In the middle is a lake in which the main Palace is reflecting like a mirror. There are little rivers near the paths which help to survive the heat at least a bit. You like to see some little fishes? There is a section of the main lake filled with hundreds if not thousands of coloured carp fishes. You can also buy some fish food and feed those greedy monsters which will result that the water appears to be boiling by all the movement the fishes are making. I can’t say what was more amusing for me, those monsters fishes or MIL trying to tease them by throwing very little food at a time into the water and laughing at the same time nearly hysterically.

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Interesting performance

 

In the evening there is another very interesting thing, a water movie. It is a movie screened on the water spray created by several fountains. In the end of the movie when people start to leave the park there is still a nice firework display. I am no expert when it comes to fireworks but I think it is a pretty decent one and also worth filming.

I can just recommend visiting this place when you have enough time in Xi’an. It is a wonderful theme park and most importantly it is also clean (at least in 2011) something I often miss in China. But in case you stay till evening time to see the water movie and the fireworks I have to warn you that it will be pretty impossible to get a taxi. There are just too many people trying to get home that there are no taxis or buses free however if you like some risk you can take one of the many “black taxis”. We took one of them and it was surely a crazy car ride back home as the whole vehicle was basically a three-wheeler transformed into a mini bus without any security measurements…

I got the idea to write this post because I found my old camera again with all kind of nice pictures of our first trip to China. So prepare yourself for some more articles about my first trip to China!

 

Have you ever visited the Tang Paradise before or are you planning to travel to Xi’an someday?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts.

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https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

German Christmas Market

Christmas time is Christmas Market time for us Germans. Every city, every town and every village has its own Market offering a nice little Christmassy atmosphere in the midst of the cold and grey time most of Germany is going through around now. So what is all there on such a market which makes it so special? First of all it is decorated nicely according to the season and furthermore it just smells like Christmas (except the heavily packed Glühwein stands/ booze markets). Henry Lee from Fotoeins has a very nice collection of Christmas Market impressions on his blog including this guide for the Cologne Christmas Markets. As you can see there the bigger cities even got several markets!

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My hometown is not playing in the big league when it comes to these markets but it is still pretty nice. As we live now for over two months in Germany and had not much time to do anything we decided to take a look at the local Christmas Market. First of all, it is surely not very big but still filled with people. Usually this city of Neumünster is practically empty after 6pm. We even have a saying for this kind of thing  in German “Ab 6 Uhr werden die Bürgersteige hochgeklappt <…>” and translates into “They roll up the sidewalks”. It really feels sometimes that all life stops during evening hours. Anyways during Christmas Market time this rule does not apply and people seem to enjoy their life and the Glühwein. This Glühwein is actually Mulled Wine but each country has its own variations. So far my favorite version is the Finnish Glöggi which is slightly different and much tastier than the German Glühwein.

 

DSC02405Here in Neumünster the market offers all kind of things to spent your time on such as the food and Glühwein Stalls as mentioned before but also an ice skating field, little amusement rides for children and then of course the big Christmas tree. Nathan was mostly interested in the people passing by and my wife was focused on the different foods offered (in the end she bought some grilled sausage with bread and a bowl of Mushrooms  in garlic sauce). I used this opportunity to get my very first Glühwein for the past four years and bought a drink called “Schneemann/ Snowman” which is basically just mulled wine with some mix of booze and then on top whipped cream. Now as a specialist in the Glühwein section (not!) I can say that the taste was pretty good but once again there was too much alcohol for my liking.

 

DSC02368I think as a family you can easily spend even in this little market one to two hours (always depending on the child) as there is much food to try and drinks to warm up your soul. Other people who are not so restricted by the mood swings of Junior can spend without problem half a day or more there. However this is usually depending on the thickness of the wallet as the prices are much higher than off-season. I can just recommend to anyone visiting Germany during this time of the year to take a look at one of the (too) many Christmas markets around. In case you go there with your children, no problem, just leave them for some time in the amusement rides while you discover the rest!